Meagan wins Northern Idol

Meagan Lachapelle, of Sturgeon Falls, in a photo taken at the Northern Idol finals, this past weekend, in Sudbury.
Photo courtesy of MCTV.
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There’s a new star in Sturgeon Falls and she’s hoping to shine even brighter in the future.

Meagan Lachapelle, 16, a Grade 11 student at Ecole Secondaire Franco Cite, found out Wednesday she’d won the Northern Idol competition, beating out competitors from Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, North Bay and Timmins.

Lachapelle will now represent Northern Ontario in the Canadian Idol finals in Winnipeg April 6.

“Nobody expected this to happen in a small town and people here are telling me this is putting Sturgeon Falls on the map,” Lachapelle told BayToday.ca Wednesday evening.
"The mayor even wants to make a presentation to me at the next council meeting.”

Sleep very well
Lachapelle had been at the Northern Idol finals in Sudbury this past weekend, where the competitors were told they’d find out the winner March 31.

“I’ve slept maybe an hour a night since then, but I think I’ll sleep very well tonight,” Lachapelle said.

A bit of anguish
Though she was the winner, Lachapelle was made to suffer a bit of anguish when an MCTV camera crew arrived at her school around 11 this morning.

“The reporter told me that I’d come in second and I broke down crying and ran off to see Anne Gingras, my singing teacher,” Lachapelle said.

“Then the reporter said he wanted to do an interview with me in the cafeteria and I didn’t feel like doing one at that point, but I pretended to be happy anyway.”

Real news
But when Lachapelle went into the cafeteria the real news was announced over the PA system and the joke exposed.

“When I heard that I’d really won, I just freaked and I was jumping and running around everywhere. And everyone was cheering too, so it was great.”

Later in the day Lachapelle celebrated her win at home with family members over a pizza. Friends and neighbours dropped by too, she said, bringing flowers.

“We have so many flowers now our house looks like a funeral parlour,” Lachapelle said.
“But after a while I just had to get away from it all so my dad took me out for a drive.”

Hit the big city
Lachapelle doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare for the next stage. She’ll go shopping for a new outfit and then get back to work with Gingras and choose a song for the finals.

"Then it's time for the girl from the small town to hit the big city," Lachapelle said, "and I hope I really hit it big too."

Click here to see Meagan's final audition.